Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine, February 1951 by H.L. Gold

Boredom might have been excluded from its genetic make-up, but reality was not entirely present in its DNA helix either. Sure, that first-issue boast that ‘no story will be admitted to the series unless it is imaginative and yet coupled with a sound scientific basis’ must be open to a rigorous investigation. How could we not? ‘Authentic’ lasted for precisely eighty-five issues, spaced from January 1951 to October 1957, each one masquerading as a futurescope of wonder. The readers, and writers of ‘Authentic’ beg to disagree. Her song informs us ‘the future’s not ours to see.’. The big hit record of the day was Doris Day’s “Whatever Will Be Will Be” which entered the chart in June 1956 and peaked at no.1 while these issues were being eagerly devoured. SF readers – it seemed at the time, were an advance specimen of a new post-human hyper-terrestrial being.

I also bought a return ticket to Sirius for each bus-ride I took, and part of me never came back. that label is your guarantee of a first-rate story.’ I came along slightly later, but I was also a boy with rockets in my head. have been commissioned to write for the ‘Authentic Science Fiction’ series. Writers with imagination are picturing them for us and the best. ‘Is another world watching us?’ asks the blurb on the debut issue, ‘but even if they’re not, we are watching other worlds. Beneath a precise illumination of strangely shining moons. When spaceships flew on chutzpah and testosterone. until, eighty-five issues later, all systems stopped. And to its devotees, ‘Authentic SF’ was ‘ALL SYSTEMS GO!’. But such is the level of intrigue that it only adds to the exclusivity of the SF-reader’s virtual camaraderie. You had to know which sleazoid back-street book-shops deigned to stock them.

You had to know where to go to find them. Of course – back then in the early years of the fifties, SF magazines weren’t as readily accessible as today’s computer journals. On every page the future leaps out at you shouting ‘BOOO!!!’ Here lie ideas that fill you with the kind of awe that takes you to the edge of delicious panic. But inhaling the correspondence in the letters columns it’s easy to detect the same adrenaline-buzz of breathless male obsessiveness. It must have been something like that in 1952 for readers of ‘Authentic SF’. Silently determined to sneak-grab advance-glimpses into tomorrow’s net-head online innovations. It is characterised by immobile rows of digital-nerds, often speccy, greasy of hair and acne’d of visage, silently besieging the PC-journal racks, eager for free-access to the latest byte-size bulletins from cyberspace and computer game-ology. (Collins English Dictionary 21st Century Edition)Įxperience the city centre newsagent now.

Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine, February 1951 by H.L. Gold